


baby just say yes

by mirarlas



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, first year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21640903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirarlas/pseuds/mirarlas
Summary: The Physical Kids are throwing (yet another) party, and Margo has something for Quentin to do.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater & Margo Hanson, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39
Collections: 300bpm Flash Exchange November 2019





	baby just say yes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [psychomachia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychomachia/gifts).



“Quentin,” Margo said, waving a bottle of indefinable sparkly Eliot-experiment like you’d wave a chew toy at a terrier.

“It’s like three in the afternoon.”

“Yep.”

“It’s Wednesday.”

“Sure is.”

He went for the direct question. “Why do you want me magic-booze-wasted at three PM on a random Wednesday?”

“I don’t.” She was all the way in his room now, and plunked the bottle down in the middle of his heap of astronomy flashcards. “It’s a bribe, so you’ll get magic-booze-wasted when I _do_ want you to.”

It was bait. If he asked her, she was going to unload a whole scheme, and he was going to get a C on his recurrent-comets quiz, and then he’d end up holding a cup of homebrew that whispered celebrity gossip when the fizz popped while she and Eliot did magic Molly and tried to matchmake him with randos.

“So when do you want me wasted?” he said anyway.

She sat down on the one flashcardless corner of the bed. “You know how Eliot is the grand high overlord of Physical Kid parties?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, he’s the overlord, not the dictator.”

“There’s a difference?”

“His rule is vast, but it’s not supreme. He doesn’t get a hundred-percent say on party themes, and this week the cottage decided we’re doing High-School Throwback.”

“Like, for fun?” Quentin said, bewildered. “There’s people who want to remember high school?”

She clicked her fingers at him. “Exactly. Most of the Cottage just wants to drink spiked punch and grind to the Black-Eyed Peas so they can pretend they were the popular kids, but El isn’t one of them. He tried to veto, actually.”

“But that sounds like it’s his thing.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But he never talks about it. I met him freshman year of undergrad, but for all I know, he formed himself out of the ether and walked straight into econ.”

“So what am I doing about this?” he asked.

“I don’t need to be psychic to tell you had a shitty time in high school.”

“Thanks?”

“So,” she said, “your job is to do exactly what you were gonna do anyway. Stand in a corner with a solo cup shuffling your feet to Katy Perry and let him cheer you up.”

“I don’t see how that helps.”

“He does better with a project, and he likes you already. Helping you is gonna trick him into helping himself.” She picked the bottle back up and held it out. “Deal?”

He thought about it for a bit: the paper for Sonderland he needed to rewrite by Monday, and the mortification that Margo’s grand plan was asking him to be a pathetic loner, and the way Eliot looked sometimes when he thought nobody was looking at him. He thought about the jokes-that-weren’t that Eliot sometimes cracked about drowning his loneliness in a vat of tequila.

He thought about _he likes you already._

He grabbed the bottle. “Deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> I looked up the country top 100 for 2009 to see what Eliot might have been subjected to in high school, but it was so monumentally depressing I cut that whole idea.


End file.
